Cruelty, Family, Famine, War
by EclipseWolf64
Summary: Death. That was all he could think. He was going to die, die in this dark hell, where there was always a thick layer of tension in the air. Would there be another Gathering? Another call to slaughtering? Rated T for blood, violence, triggering scenes, and cursing.
1. Prologue

Death.

That was all he could think. He was going to die, die in this dark hell, where there was always a thick layer of tension in the air. Would there be another Gathering? Another call to slaughtering? The workers would stand straight, like soldiers, and wait as the Leader selected a few unfortunate people to die. How would they go? he wondered. Would they be shot with arrows? Have their limbs hacked off one by one? Bones crushed? There was an infinite number of possibilities of how they would die.

The prisoners jostled and staggered into the main room. Heavy breaths resounded through the chamber; everybody was hoping that they wouldn't be singled out. Eyes flitted anxiously at the many smaller, walled-off spaces. Dried blood was splattered over the windows, making it look like a piece of twisted stained-glass art.

A lithe, brown-haired teenage she-crafter brushed by his shoulder. He turned to her, trembling with intense fear. She could condemn herself and him just by startling the latter.

"Dusk," she whispered almost inaudibly, "I think my luck has run out."

The teenage Minecraftian, Dusk, stiffened. First his father died, then his mother, and now his love. No! "Swift, you won't die today."

"If not today, then tomorrow. Or later. It's better than staying here until our sanity disappears," Swift replied.

Dusk's chest tightened. His throat seemed to stop functioning, making it hard for him to force out any words. "Y-you can't die now! We've been here for -" He stopped himself. How long had it been?

"We've been here for two years now!" she argued. "Where do you think we'll go after that 'escape to freedom' you've been planning since Notch knows how long? We have almost no memory of anything outside of here! It could be hell outside these walls for all we know!"

He stopped short, caught off guard by Swift's outburst. His jaw fell open, leaving him gawking dumbly.

"And look what the place has done to you!" she continued, undaunted by his shock. "You get suspicious at the drop of a hat and whenever I'm even a tiny bit out of your field of vision you run after me!"

Dusk avoided her hard stare, trying to figure out a way to placate Swift. He squeezed his eyes shut when the Leader called out a name in his dark, booming voice.

"Swift! You have been selected!"

Sinking. A heavy, sinking feeling. The words carved a deep valley into Dusk's heart, and the crater was soon filled with disbelief and shock. Swift cast her eyes low in a semblance of submission, accepting her fate and walking towards her death. Her footsteps echoed as she stepped towards a worker. Then, she tipped her head up and glared defiantly at the worker. If she was going to die, she was not going to die screaming and covered in blood.

Unreality. It wasn't real, Dusk told himself. It was just a vivid dream, just a horrible, bloody nightmare. Black specks lined his field of vision and he wobbled slightly as Swift was escorted into an adjoining chamber. The world spun; iron catwalks, metal walls and floors, and people whirled around him. It's not real, it's not real!

Dusk rushed to the window of the room Swift was inside of, screaming, "Don't kill her! Don't kill her! You promised that I would die before her!" He wheeled around and was met face-to-face with a worker. His eyes were duller than stones, nearly colorless with lack of humanity. The worker remained silent, but he twisted Dusk's arms around and locked him in a tight, restraining grip.

Pistons clicked. Four menacing clicks. Clicks of death. The pistons retracted, revealing four gleaming dispensers. Swift only blinked to show her fear. She turned to Dusk one last time, gazing into his puppyish brown eyes.

Four clicks again. Dusk felt a tearing, ripping pain in his chest as one arrow ripped into Swift's stomach. It was a classic gag with this; one never knew which dispenser would shoot or where the arrow would strike. It was one last mind game before death.

Blood spritzed out of the mortal wound, streaming over the arrow and Swift's shirt. This was it. She was dying, dying slowly, just a few feet from Dusk. He couldn't stand it. He stumbled backwards and yelped when a worker kicked him, goading him to get up. Dusk rose unsteadily, shaking uncontrollably as he was met with a gruesome sight.

The worker had dirty-blonde hair, combed, unlike all of the other employees. This worker was all business; all of the other ones only showed a bit of interest whenever there was somebody to kill. Otherwise, their bloodlust was dormant, and their eyes were flat with a couldn't-care-less look. This worker had a long, ugly scar sliced across his neck, red-brown with old dry blood. Two more scars ripped over his right eye, forcing it shut. The other ones had minor scrapes and scabs, but nothing so grotesque as this. This worker knew what was expected of him, and Dusk could tell from that lone green eye he had. It was still bright with the fire of will.

He beckoned to Dusk, but the latter did not come forward. He stepped backwards, bracing himself for a fight. The older teens had taught him where to strike and they had sparred occasionally, but it was no substitute for a real, no-holds-barred battle. Besides, this crafter was much older than him, and definitely stronger. But Dusk instinctively wanted to avoid death, for nothing, nothing on this earth wanted to willingly die.

It was no match at all. The employee grabbed Dusk by the collar of his faded orange coat and dragged him away from the main chamber of the place. Dusk kicked and struggled, even trying to gnaw down on his coat to separate himself from the worker's iron grip. If he remembered correctly - though his memories were dim - there was an icy frigidness outside the walls of this hell, colder than its bowels. Running around coatless would mean death by freezing. So he gnawed, but only ended up with a few frayed strings. Relentlessly, the worker kept yanking him along, completely silent.

Dusk shut his eyes and gave up, weeping until there was no more to weep.

**xXxXx**

**A/N:**

**I'm rewriting the original _Cruelty, Family, Famine,_ War! The first chapter is short because it's more of a prologue, in case you're wondering. Woo hoo, a 1053 word prologue! Don't worry, I'll make the rest of the chapters longer, although the epilogue might be about as long as the prologue. Also, I must write an actual summary rather than putting the first few sentences. :/**

**Please review! I'll reply to every single one of them! And I'll update weekly if I can! Favorite this and follow it, too!**

**~EclipseWolf64~**


	2. Silver Blade

_Where... where am I?_

Dusk opened his bloodshot eyes, feeling like a bloody slab of roadkill. He was in a room with merely a bed, wood walls, and torches. It was warm and almost suffocating, and he realized that he was in a _bed_, covered with a dove-feather-soft _blanket._ Usually, he'd have to sleep on filthy steel floors, with nothing but his red-brown shirt and his blue jeans to keep him warm. Beds and blankets were as foreign to him, but he knew he must be in a better place if he had them.

A warm, uplifting scent drifted under the door, billowing up and puffing into Dusk's face as if to beckon him. He inhaled through his mouth, almost tasting the freshness. Another sign! He was in a good place, far away from _the place._ Dusk had always thought of it as simply "_the place"_, for its true name always sent jitters through his bones, which jutted out slightly from being poorly fed.

The teenager tentatively set one foot on the ground, then the other. He breathed in the pungent smell again, making sure that it wasn't only a scent. It wasn't, for there was a fullness that meant that something was on the end of the scent trail. His mouth watered, and he swallowed down his own spit before opening the door, wiping his sweat-laden palms on his jeans.

Dusk walked down the hallway, his feet cushioned on _carpeting_, another thing he had nearly forgotten. He turned left and saw a modest birchwood table. A plain white plate was set in the middle, and on it was _bread!_ The bread was a golden brown color, with one loaf already split into many slices. The slices were white on the inside, edged with perfect crusts. Dusk's heartbeat quickened with anticipation - bread was almost mythical to him - but then heard the rumble of somebody snoring. He whipped around and his breath stuck fast to the inside of his throat.

The worker. The scar-faced, hideous worker who had dragged him away. There he was, his cratered, one-eyed face, the wide scar with raw skin around the wound on his neck. He was revolting, so disgusting and demonic. He was almost non-Minecraftian.

Dusk felt like screaming. It was gut-wrenching to be in the same room as the scar-faced worker, who was just as insane and depraved as the other workers. He couldn't stand it, couldn't handle it, couldn't take it. He had to run away from here!

Dusk quivered, stumbling on wobbly legs as he tried to sneak out of the door. But the scar-faced crafter must've sensed it, for he awoke, his green cat-like eye sizing up Dusk's condition. Dusk froze, too frightened to melt into hysteria.

The younger of the two was tall and lanky. He had chocolate brown eyes that were slightly pinkish and bloodshot. His face was pale, mostly from fear but partially from two years' imprisonment inside of _the place._ His light brown hair was too ruffled to be only from sleep, so the worker supposed that he had been having nightmares.

Yes, Dusk _had_ been fighting a nightmare all night, every agonizing minute becoming sharper, more terrifying, than the last. The first was a vague, blurred scene of Swift bravely marching to her death. The next was a little clearer, with the iron door to the room branching off of the main chamber opening. Swift walked into it, stopping only to glance at Dusk with a look of forlorn courageousness. Then, there was the ice-cold clarity of the very moment of her death, when the flint-tipped arrow impaled her stomach. He screeched and rushed to the window, pounding the glass and nearly breaking one. She raised a palsied hand to stop him. Then, her eyes lost their sight and shut forever. Yes, she was dead. Nothing could reverse that, and nothing could stop the nightmare from ripping open Dusk's heart.

_Why am I still alive?_ he wanted to plead. _Why am I alive? Why is Swift dead? Why do I deserve this?_ But there was only the intense green stare of the worker.

The worker stretched his hand out to a coffee table, plucking from it a clean sheet of paper. He scribbled onto it with the remains of a nearly broken pencil.

_My name is Xan._ From the softened face of Xan, Dusk could tell that he was expecting an answer.

"My name is... Dusk," he said, barely disguising his disgust. He was extremely wary of this "Xan", almost to the point of thinking that everything he had been told in _the place_ was a lie. That his reality was nothing more than something to be toyed with. That in actuality, there was nothing but pure hell in this world. It was a frightening, yet plausible, notion.

_Would you __stop_ _looking at my scar?_ Xan flashed the piece of paper at Dusk.

"O-okay...," Dusk squeaked, ducking his head and wiping his sweaty hands on his pants. He backed away and looked away, as if he were submissive.

_And quit doing that,_ Xan added. _We're not there anymore so you don't need all of that "who's on top" crap._

Dusk nodded, then started opening the door. Xan shrugged, waving him off. _Go ahead, just don't go beyond the fence._

And Dusk grinned wildly, and set off for the outside world.

xXxXx

Snow. Snow was everywhere, coating everything in tiny, crystalline flakes and glazing black, skeletal trees in cloaks of ice. And it was cold, in a more welcoming way than the frigidness of _the place_. Below, there was an endless expanse of white blanketing the ground and the hills and the dips. Above stretched the azure sky, splashed with clouds scudding across it. And everything sparkled, and everything was colorful, and everything was beautiful.

Back in _the place_, there was always something horrible happening. Pistons always ground down into a sort of water conveyor belt, creating XP bottles or crushing Minecraftian bones. There was always the one crafter who was unpredictable and attacked at the slightest provocation. And always, there were the workers stalking around the shadows, watching closely for any sign of a good target.

Dusk shook off the bad memories, then kept going, his eyes sweeping over the land. It was such a sharp contrast with _the place_'s dim, shadowy chambers that he was completely awestruck. _The place_ was revolting, stained with blood, gore, and cruelty. Outside, everything was bright and wonderful. Dusk stopped near a fence post and leaned on it. The snow shimmered, the white flecked and peppered with silvery glints.

"Hey! Who're you?" a voice called to him.

Dusk jerked around suddenly, and spotted a small, lithe she-crafter standing on a nearby fence post. She was black-haired and had gleaming, slightly slanted eyes. She had a light blue shirts, slate-gray pants and earth-brown boots. Instantly, he knew she was trespassing on not just the farm, but the whole country.

A long time ago, before Dusk had been born, there had been a massive war between Shaftland - Dusk's country - and Chunkia. It was over a piece of territory that held a perpetually dark forest and Shaftland's side of the river. Both sides wanted to win. Chunkia wanted territory from Shaftland; Shaftland wanted to keep theirs. Thus, it had the most casualties and was named the Shaftland Territory War. And Chunkia had won the dark forest. Shaftland and Chunkia had become fierce competitors on territory. Borders were to be maintained and kept safe on both sides.

"You're on the wrong side of the border," Dusk snapped, but his voice wavered. He glared weakly at her.

"_Dew'h,"_ she muttered, cursing. "It's been forever since the Territory War. I don't think you should hold a grudge."

Dusk started to avert his eyes submissively, then remembered not to. He kicked at the snow and said, "You're also trespassing here. You have to leave."

"Maybe I don't _want_ to leave," the Chunkian she-crafter scoffed. She jumped down from the wooden post and kicked snow back at Dusk. She flashed a cheeky grin at him.

Dusk stepped forward. "Just go."

The she-crafter laughed, her eyes folding into half-moons from her smile. "What, are _you _going to run me off? You don't even look like you can chase a mouse!" Dusk opened his mouth to reply, but she cut him off with another spray of snow.

"Hey! Will you just stop-"

All of a sudden, a memory leaked out.

xXxXx

"Damn," she says, grumbling from the shadows.

Dusk turns to her and whispers, "Swift, be quiet! It's past midnight! If they hear you..."

"I'm going to die anyways," Swift replies, flipping her hair over her shoulder.

"No, you won't!" Dusk snaps, his eyes burning into hers. "How do you even know?"

"A little bird told me." She smiles sadly.

The image fades, then changes into that of Swift's death.

Her body is pierced through by a single arrow, blood splattering everywhere. It reeks of death. There is only the suffocating darkness. Dusk is sick to his stomach as his eyes lock onto the grisly scene, the fallen bodies, the stone-hearted workers. There is nothing, nobody, no one, no more. It is all blood from Swift's body. Her brave eyes rake into his mind, and Dusk yelps, shaken to his bones. Then, she is thrown onto the water conveyor belt, ground up by demon pistons, and bled dry. The water turns into a sickly reddish-pink. Dusk wants to scream, but he cannot. He wants to run away from it all, but his legs are stone.

A voice is all it takes to break him out of the nightmare.

xXxXx

"A - Are you alright?" the she-crafter gasped as Dusk opened his sore eyes. He had been squeezing them shut the whole time. Sweat caked his forehead. His legs were watery and wobbly again. Something was under his hand. Warm and soft, but weathered and tough. It was the Chunkian she-crafter's hand.

Dusk nodded, blushing. He lifted his hand away from hers and combed his fingers through his hair, making sure it wasn't too messy.

"I - I have to go now," he said. "You should go before Xan finds you."

"Xan?" the she-crafter asked.

But Dusk was gone, without a trail of footprints to follow. Vanished. As if he had never been.

xXxXx

He wakened instantly.

Dusk shuddered, his breath accelerating and his head throbbed. He had been dreaming, but it had been a cruel desire instead of something pleasant. He had dreamed of Swift, who was dead. They had been together, then an arrow had torn in between them and then she was dead and all he could do was watch helplessly as her blood, her source of life, spilled out.

Why was he still alive?

Everybody he had known was now dead, and yet he had lived. _Why me? Why me?_ The refrain played through his head over and over, morphing into an emptiness that made his chest tighten. _Why me? Why me?_ Dusk forced his mouth open, trying to breathe, but finding it difficult, almost impossible. He crawled to the foot of the bed and looked down on the ground. There was a simple chest, just five planks nailed together with a hinged one on top. He reached down and opened it.

There was a switchblade.

Dusk sucked in a shallow breath. It was a small knife, about two and a half inches. The blade was delicate and the handle was tiny. But if handled correctly, it could potentially maim somebody. He plucked it out of the chest, his breathing becoming more rapid and his anticipation growing.

The young crafter shut his eyes as the dead feeling in his chest amplified and froze his heart. Then, he rolled up his left sleeve and dragged the blade of the knife across the exposed skin. There was no cut, just a reddened area. Dusk pressed harder, the knife hunkering down into his skin. He sliced a small cut, just a nick in his skin. Blood trickled out of the scratch, and Dusk felt relieved. As if the blood was the deadness gushing out of his body. He slashed into his arm again, making a longer slash. He cut slowly, prolonging the sharp bite of pain from the minute blade. His breath came in choppy gasps as the cold, oppressing feeling dissolved. Warmth spread through him as his heart raced. In that one minuscule moment of guiltless, almost euphoric cutting, Dusk felt something in him slip. He felt so alive in that moment, holding the knife only made him want to cut more.

Grinning madly, he knew he had to cover up the cuts. There was nothing concealable to wipe it on, so Dusk lapped at his arm to get rid of the blood. Then, he licked the blood off of the switchblade, not caring that it slit his tongue. He was still swept up in the liberating sensation and only the salty taste of his blood enhanced it. He felt that since he hadn't done anything to stop Swift's death, he had a debt to pay. To whom he did not know, but he had repaid it with his blood. Such a twisted logic would be appalling to most, but Dusk didn't care. He had repaid his debt to Swift, and he had to repay many others. All of the others he couldn't save. Couldn't protect. He would do that on other nights, for in Dusk's mind it was between him and the dead.

"It's okay, Swift," he cooed as he brought up a mental picture of her, and his hands stroked the lacerations on his arm. "I'll make it all right, because I deserve this. I can't protect anyone, but I can at least do something as" - he broke off for a moment, groping for the word - "repentance." His voice became lower and almost raspy. "And I would bleed myself dry to bring you back. Maybe it could work, but life is such a fucking bastard. It must be sadistic if it wants everybody to suffer so much. What a douchebag, right?" He became vengeful. "Maybe we could kill everyone who's made us so miserable, right? Remember the time I nearly killed somebody?"

One year ago, a fellow prisoner had poked fun at te death of Dusk's parents. He had been a newbie there, and didn't know much other than happiness. That glee had been pounded out of him when Dusk pounced onto him, and with his fingernails ripped open the part of the older teen's arm, pulling out a sinew of muscle. The teen had said, "Your parents must've been really bad at raisin' you -" Dusk had cut him off by gripping the teen's throat, his hand tight around it like a vice. The teen coughed and his mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water. His face became red, then purplish as Dusk's fingers dug into his throat, slowly killing him.

"Dusk, you're killing him!" Swift had shrieked.

He broke out of the memory, still cradling his cut-up arm. Shaking his head, he whispered urgently. "I just down understand why I'm alive. I shouldn't be here! I can't, I can't..."

Xan was not sure why he was awake. He had sensed something, but what it was he wasn't quite sure. He just knew that something was wrong. The very atmosphere was dripping with wrongness. Something so very perverse was occuring at that moment. He could feel it in his scar, as if it could perceive things his other senses couldn't. The damning conviction in the scar across his neck was too striking to ignore. So he rose up out of bed, entered the hall, and put his ear to Dusk's door.

Dusk was sobbing quietly, pausing every so often to suck in a stilted breath, only to cry some more. Once in a while he would whimper, "Why am I the rejected one?" or "Why me?" or "What did I do?" Xan felt his throat seize up and he inhaled a breath and dumped it down into his lungs. Why was he paying so much attention to Dusk? Usually, as with the other "cases" he would leave them to weep then pry about it the next morning. But now it only pained him to hear a crafter as young as Dusk cry so much. The poor youngster had lost so much, it was only natural for him to cry. But something was amiss, and that made Xan suspicious. He knocked softly at the door.

Dusk quickly put the knife back into the chest, rolled down his shirt sleeve, and slammed his head against the pillow, trying to feign sleep. Hopefully, Xan would leave him alone, even though the one thing he needed now was a shoulder to cry on. Before, he could cry all he wanted to around Swift, but she was dead. Gone. Forever. He squeezed his eyes shut again and tried to slow his breathing, pretending to be asleep. The brown-haired crafter couldn't stop the whimpers from escaping his mouth, though, no matter how hard he tried.

Xan entered the room, and although Dusk did not say anything to him, he stood watchfully at the doorway, his lone eye glowing faintly in the slivers of moonlight from the windows. There was a little bit of a respectfulness in his stance that made him different from the other workers. Saner - at least.

Dusk lay absolutely still, his breathing quickening again. What did the one-eyed Minecraftian want with him? Xan showed no signs of insanity; he had a straight, even gait instead of an erratic lumbering walk. He didn't have violent outbursts. No madness tics, like talking to himself or being extremely paranoid. He was just...sane.

But Dusk pressed harder into the bed, hoping that he would be left alone. No matter what, he had to survive, even if he had to kill to do so. He had nearly done it before; he could do so now.

He snapped upward instantly, eyes locked onto Xan, his hands shaking. "You again!" he snarled. "What are you doing here?"

Xan was taken aback for a moment, startled by the ferocity inside of Dusk's voice. _What in the name of-_

Dusk interrupted his thoughts. "Why the hell are you here? Can't you see that you've done enough damage? I've seen you take other crafters away and they come back with all this hope bullshit!" His voice took on a singsong mocking tone. _"'Oh, we'll get out alive someday, everything's all fine and dandy, just keep going!'_ But _no! _They say that you and those other crafters are going to save us. You aren't Notch! You can't save us! All you've done is give them fake happiness, and then they get slaughtered more brutally than the others! Ripped into pieces, _alive!_ It's all dominance and submission, and the ones who try to escape are tortured to death!" He started crying again. "Why can't you see that we're screwed no matter what? We're all going to die someday. Why make it more painful?"

Xan opened his mouth to reply, then remembered that he was mute. Like always. Shaking his head in dismay, he left the room and went back to bed, feeling like a failure. Dusk fell back onto the mattress, completely spent after that night.

Before he fell back asleep, he thought about the little Chunkian girl he met at the fence.

**A/N:**

**I'M SO SORRY FOR THIS BEING SO LATE ASDFASDFKGJHBVKVGJNHLSKDXUJCKLHRJGHNXSXJZLIDJHXSGC BJCH IT'S JUST THAT STUFF HAPPENS IN REAL LIFE AND THAT AFFECTS A LOT OF THINGS *cryforever***

**~Eclipse~**


End file.
